Scientists came across a new shark species in the Atlantic Ocean, recent study reveals

A new species of shark having teeth similar to saw and six gills was exposed to the Atlantic Ocean, the aquatic ecologists at Florida Institute of Technology confirmed. A similar animal was discovered in the counterparts of Indian and Pacific oceans. But after a laboratory test, it was revealed that the animal had no connection with species found years later.

The newly discovered shark is 6-feet long, having six gills, and saw-like longer teeth are often called as Hexanchus Vitulus. They usually grow wider up to 15 to 20 feet long. Normally, the shark has at the most five gills, but the recent ones are genetically different. That’s where its uniqueness lies.

The species observed in Indo-Pacific oceans seemed to be similar with that found in the Atlantic Ocean when observed with a naked eye but revealed a huge difference when studied their genetic structure, says Toby Daly-Engel, the assistant ecologist at Florida Institute of Technology who research findings were published in the Journal of Marine Biodiversity.

You can call these Atlantic species as the relative of Indo-Pacific ones but not of same type or classification. Atlantic sixgill has long survival rate than the other ones. We now two categories of species – one with five gills and one with six gills. After studying these species, we get to know the fact that if they become extinct we would no longer see them in other parts of the world.

These species had their existence long back, long before the life of dinosaurs. Casting these sharks and studying their anatomy is a challenging task as they reside thousands of miles below in the oceanic bodies.

The team determined 1,310 base pairs of two mitochondrial genes and discovered that genetic structure of Hexanchus Nakamurai was much different than what the Atlantic species Hexanchus Vitulus bared. “Understanding their biology and behavior can help in finding the history of that species such as their evolution and distribution”, Daly-Engel concludes.